A Story for the Girl with Green Shoes
by Marshall Perry
Summary: Many people have heard what happened after Ted Mosby finished telling his kids the story of how he met their mother, but there's more, much more that happened afterward. Like many of Ted's stories, this takes place at a wedding, but the wedding isn't his.


**(Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in this story, aside from Amy, who was invented by me. Ted Mosby, Tracy McConnell, and Robin Scherbatsky, among others, are from the TV show "How I Met Your Mother," which was created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays. The following is an imagining of what might happen to certain characters after events that transpired during the show's controversial finale.)**

_Hi. I'm Ted Mosby. In exactly forty-five days from now, you and I are going to meet, we're going to fall in love, we're going to get married, we're going to have two kids, and we're going to love them and each other so much. All that is forty-five days away, but I'm here now, I guess because I want those extra forty-five days with you. I want each one of them. Look, if I can't have that, I'll take the forty-five seconds before your boyfriend shows up and punches me in the face, because I love you. I'm always going to love you, until the end of my days and beyond. You'll see._

As I'm looking at this simple paragraph I wrote on a piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad, I'm wondering why I brought it with me to the wedding of my daughter, Penny Mosby, soon to be Penny Stinson. As I sit in my suit in one of the back rooms of the little church, waiting to walk her down the aisle, I know for a fact that she would understand the significance of this letter of sorts, words I would have said to her mother if I could have somehow spoken to her before we met in the real world. It's not as if I plan on bringing up the topic of Tracy, my soulmate, Penny's mother, and the better half of myself, on a day during which I'm not supposed to be mourning. I should be celebrating, and I swear I am. It's just that my yearning for Tracy hasn't left me since she died in 2024.

Of course, the fact that I'm planning on avoiding the topic of my former wife, whose grave I visit with her trademark yellow umbrella on every rainy day, doesn't mean my plans will fall into place. If there's one thing I've learned in life that stands out to me among every lesson I've been taught, it's this: You don't get to plan your destiny. It just happens. You see, if I had been asked in my adolescence about what my adult life had in store for me, what I would have said would have been the opposite of what happened.

I've always wanted to be an architect, and to be successful from the moment I stepped off the stage on the day of my graduation. I didn't know what pitfalls, mistakes, and feelings of utter hopelessness lay in my future. I am an architect, but I'm not perfect. I'd like to say that, if I had known about all that, I still would have faced everything headfirst, but the truth is I would've hidden under my bed like a little boy afraid of monsters. The same idea applies to my romantic life. I didn't get married until I was what I once would have considered an old man, and the idea of that long wait to find the woman I was meant to be with isn't something with which I would have been comfortable when I was younger. As I say this, I remember something I told Penny and her brother, Luke, a long time ago.

_It was, at times, a long, difficult road, but I'm glad it was long and difficult, because if I hadn't gone through Hell to get there, the lesson might not have been as clear. See, kids, right from the moment I met your mom, I knew I have to love this woman as much as I can, for as long as I can, and I can never stop loving her, not even for a second. I carried that lesson with me through every stupid fight we ever had, every five a.m. Christmas morning, every sleepy Sunday afternoon. Through every speed bump, every pang of jealousy or boredom or uncertainty that came our way, I carried that lesson with me, and I carried it with me when she got sick. Even then, in what can only be called the worst of times, all I could do was thank God, thank every God there is, or was, or ever will be, and the whole universe and anyone else I could possibly thank, that I saw that beautiful girl on that train platform, and that I had the guts to stand up, walk over to her, open my mouth, and speak._

As I remember telling this story to Penny and Luke, the story I'm now telling you about, you'd think I would be sad. I'm not sad, though, because I was lucky enough to meet a woman who would change my life, completing me from the inside out. I can remember that time, in the year 2030, when my children urged me to ask my ex-girlfriend, Robin Scherbatsky, on a date, and I listened. I listened when they said the story I'd so eagerly related to them wasn't about Tracy, because her parts in the story of how I met her were scarce. I couldn't help but voice my agreement with them when they told me to move on. I said they were right when I knew they were wrong, and I stole the blue French horn- I know I've told you about that "romantic symbol" time and time again- for her. I was ecstatic when she took it from me and agreed to go out with me. As you know, I've been on plenty of terrible dates before, but I swear this was the worst of them all. Hey, since we have some time before I have to walk my daughter down the aisle, why don't I tell you about it?

We went to an expensive Italian restaurant that hadn't yet been built the first time Robin and I were dating. The food was amazing. However, when I spoke to Robin, it was like I was talking to a ghost, and I almost think I was. It might sound crazy, but you've seen what heartbreak can do to a person. When Robin divorced Barney, Ellie's father, I feel like whatever amount of optimism and hope that had been inside her died. She threw herself into her work, and while she wasn't ever alone with her job that forced her to be around people, she didn't connect with anyone. Even when I brought up the past, she shrugged it away as if remembering it was painful for her. I don't know, maybe it was. She wouldn't talk about the present time either, not in any way that made sense. She was so elusive, and not in that nonchalant, mysterious way she had been when she was younger.

Still, I thought the night could be saved. After dinner, I took her for a walk in Central Park, and it started to snow. She was still quiet, but she seemed less empty. With a glimmer of hope in my eye, I kissed her, and then she punched me in the face as hard as she could. The next day, I had an enormous bruise on my left cheekbone.

"Ted!" she shrieked, before she covered her mouth, seeming to realize what she'd done.

All I could do for a moment was stare at her before I regained any sense of composure I'd had before then, and when I did speak, it was little more than a stutter. Our next- and last- words to each other are something I won't forget as long as I live.

"R-Robin, why did you do that? I thought you wanted to go out with me. If you didn't want to, you didn't have to say yes."

"Damn it, Ted," she said, looking emotional to the point that she would have cried if she could. "I can't be a mother. You know that."

"What?"

I was confused, wondering what she meant.

"I'm not asking you to have kids with me, Robin. It was a kiss, and nothing else. Anyway, I already have two kids of my own."

"That's the point," she interrupted me, seeming on the verge of hysteria. "You have two kids, and if we get together, they're going to expect me to be some sort of… maternal figure to them. That's not who I am, and you know it. God, Ted, you had your chance with me, and you blew it, okay? You fucking blew it, and I will never forgive you or myself for the fact that it didn't work out. I should have married you, and instead of that, you went off and you were happy with her, when I was…"

She broke off, sobbing now, and it wasn't until I saw her tears that I realized I was crying, too. I knew she was right. If we were meant for each other, we would have already been pushed together by the universe. The fact that this hadn't happened wasn't what made me have the epiphany to end all epiphanies, however. You have to understand that Robin and I were always shoved apart instead of together, and there was no way we could be the type of lovers where the stars were aligned, causing us to never separate. We always separated, and this stupid attempt at winning her back after all those years wouldn't turn out to be anything different. I thought I'd let go of Robin on the day of her wedding, but in reality, I didn't let her go until that night in 2030. I shouldn't have dwelled on the past as long as I did, because life doesn't move backwards. Life only moves forward, as Tracy said to me one cold evening in the year she died.

So I ran forward, past Robin, leaving her alone in Central Park. I haven't seen her since then, and I can't say it's a loss. Barney told me she would have been coming to the wedding if she didn't have to work, but I think the truth is she doesn't want to see me. She might not want to see me with _you, _to be more exact. If Tracy was my soulmate and Robin was the love of my life, I don't know what you are, Amy, but I know you're something special.

I knew you were something special from the instant I saw you, with your red hair, enormous blue eyes, tiny barefoot body, and those pretty, green, high-heeled shoes in your hand. Those are the shoes you're wearing today, the ones you were wearing when we met in the cemetery where you told me it was okay to be sad. After all this time together, I don't know who you were visiting, but I like to think you were there for me, even if neither of us had met until then.

When I got home from my date with Robin, Penny and Luke had left. I should have known they would get out of the house as soon as they thought I was going to be gone until morning, because that's the way kids are. I didn't blame them for going out past their curfew. After all, they'd been listening to my crazy stories on that couch for what seemed like almost a decade.

Someone was at my house, though, and that was Ellie Stinson. She'd used her father's key to get in, and I was amazed yet again by how much she looked like him, without seeming to have any traits of her other parent. I wasn't sure about the details of why she preferred spending time with Barney as opposed to "Number Thirty-One," which is how I still refer to that woman about whom I know very little. I do know Ellie was mature for her age, unlike my typical teenagers. Still, it was a symbol of Barney's relaxed parenting that she was allowed to cross the street by herself to visit me. I said as much, but she didn't respond to the good-natured slight. Instead, she handed me an envelope.

"This is for you."

"Oh?" I asked, smiling at her. "What is it?"

"Dad said it's a letter your wife wrote when she knew she was going soon. She gave it to him, and she said he was supposed to give it to you when you were ready. He says you're ready now."

I told Ellie, "Thank you," before I sent her home.

Then I sat on the couch Luke and Penny had been occupying hours before that point in time, and I opened the thick envelope. In it was something thick enough to be a short story, and it wasn't until I started reading my wife's beautiful handwriting that I realized it was the tale of how she met me. It was like what she'd told me before, and what I'd related to my kids in addition to how I met her, but with far more detail. I don't know how this is possible, but I swear the paper still smelled like her.

Tracy and I crossed paths without me seeing her more than I thought was possible, and she had written down all those near-encounters. How she never told me that she knew the secret of "The Pineapple Incident" is beyond me, but she'd written that, too. Marshall was ecstatic when I told him and Lily…

No. I'm crying, and I promised myself I wouldn't break down on the day of Penny's wedding to Ellie. (Who knew Barney and I would be in-laws? I wouldn't have guessed it.) Therefore, I don't think I can go any further with this story, but what I do want to say, Amy, is that I feel like she's with us right at this moment. She once told me something along the lines of how it would take a terrible mother to miss her own daughter's wedding, and I couldn't stop the crying fit that overtook me. It was then that I knew she was going to die, that the cancer was taking over her body. I thought the disease wouldn't stop its campaign until she was in a coffin, and I was right. It wasn't long after I foresaw her death that I was reading _Love in the Time of Cholera _to her from beside her hospital bed. It was my favorite book and she loved it as well. I have a copy of it, worn from multiple readings, sitting on my nightstand to this day.

She said what she did about daughters being married during a time when she knew she was going to die, and I think she understood the significance of what she was saying when I couldn't do that yet. It's like I can see the way she would look if she was alive today, standing behind the chair I'm sitting in at the moment, with her brown hair and matching eyes. She had a delicate look about her, often wearing floral prints, and I still love every detail of her. I told her once I would love her until the end of my days and beyond, and I wasn't lying. I wouldn't lie to the woman I love.

Maybe my love for her is the reason I've moved on to you, Amy, instead of someone else. Despite the conversations we've had, our friendship or whatever it is, we are quite untraditional. I think it's okay to say this aloud, because I know you're thinking it. I always know what you're thinking, because you're a girl I invented in my head. You were never real.

I have to say goodbye to you, and I don't know if I speak to you again. It's 2040, and I'm an old man. I've been with many women, and loved none as much as Tracy McConnell or even Robin Scherbatsky. My brief marriage to a woman I met in Atlantic City five years ago showed me I can't fall in love with anyone the way I used to. There are millions of women out there who would love to be with me, but I've decided I don't want any of them. I want Tracy, and if I can't have her in real life anymore, I'll have her in my dreams. She's all I hear when I fall asleep at night, and that's not going to change until I'm with her in whatever the afterlife has reserved for both of us.


End file.
